With more than 5 million apps flooding the App Store and Google Play by the end of 2017, you surely have a tough competition to face. Not only does your app need to be outstanding and simplify people’s lives but also stand out amongst the bunch of hundreds of similar apps.

So, though you are finally done with building your app, the real test still remains. The chances are that though your app is very good, no one actually knows that it exists. Thus, you need to market your app effectively to make people interested in your app. Here we discuss a few strategies that will help you market your mobile app effectively in 2018.

Show the utility of your app

You may be having a great marketing strategy for your mobile app, but if people don’t think it is useful for them, they aren’t going to be interested in it. Rather than making your app just another mobile version of your website or online store that would engage only your current customers, you can come up with creative ideas that will attract your target users and make your brand name visible to them. For example, a fitness app can come up with methods of calculating your BMR and then give suggestions as to what needs to be done for improving and correcting it. The main purpose here is to provide your target customer base with something that is useful for them. This will help you reap inordinate results from both your marketing and your mobile app.

Write guest blogs

For making your app more visible to increase the number of downloads, you need to provide more exposure to your app and build more audience. While this is a time-taking process, you can act diligently and create content and blogs that can be published not only on your website but also for the audience of other websites. This is where guest blogging plays its role and helps you establish authority with a larger group of people and earn more downloads. For this, you need to target blogs and technology publications that are relevant to your niche and popular amongst your target audience. Provide quality content that provides new information to the reader and avoids making your guest blog posts overly promotional and sales oriented. Try to include a link to your app as well as your website and gear the topic in such a way that by the end of the post, the readers are ready to check out your mobile app. Make your author bio enticing and link it to your app’s page on your website, iTunes, or Google Play with the action-inducing words like “Check out our mobile app now.”

Display ratings and reviews

People generally check for ratings and reviews before downloading an app. High ratings and positive reviews provide them with social proof and entice them to download your app. To gain these high ratings and positive reviews you need to provide great user experience by making your app smooth, fast, and easy and testing it thoroughly for the same before its launch. Ask the users to provide their reviews and feedback and provide additional value for this, such as unlocking new content or virtual lives, to increase chances of receiving quality feedback. This will also enrich your knowledge on how to enhance your app experience further. A higher rank in-app store is more likely to pull up your ranking in mobile search.

Use social media

With its wide popularity, social media is an excellent tool for attracting targeted users and existing users. You can feature an app release in social media and catch hold of the first interested users. You can provide important updates and get valuable feedback from customers using social media wisely. Thematic infographics, hot topics, and other entertaining and useful content can be provided to users through this medium keep them engaged while also attracting new users.

Contact influencers

You need to contact influencers – trendsetters, bloggers, and members of media – in your niche, who have gained thousands of followers around their social profiles. Tell them about your app, and they might be interested in covering it if it seems interesting enough to them, otherwise encourage them to try it and then review it. However, be careful not to go after the number of followers and check out the quality by building mutually beneficial and honest relations with influencers in your industry, though this may lead to lesser but more relevant users. Your patience and persistence are also needed for getting your app featured on a blog, and you need to provide enough time to the person in charge of responding before you follow up.

Optimize your app for the App Store

You also need to use app store optimization for gaining more visibility on the app store featuring your app. To make your app appear in relevant searches, best-targeted or related keywords need to be added to your app profile and description. You need to think over the terms you will be using to search for topics or an app similar to yours.

Introduce using a promo video

You need to introduce your app before its actual launch to encourage speculation over your app. For this, you need to make people stroll around your app with a short 30 seconds dynamic video that shows the main features, design, and user’s value of your product. This video should be placed on your website, shared through social media, and sent to mobile ad agencies for promotion. A good promo video will not only increase awareness about your app but also make people wait for its release to check out their speculations. Make this video sharable and offer immediate, valuable rewards to users for sharing it on social media profiles or blogs.

Final thoughts

App developers in India are creating exceptional apps and using multiple app promotion channels by selecting the channels that can work appropriately for your specific product. They are also building tailored ecosystems with a specific range of app promotion tools, services, and platforms.

You need to understand that with so many apps in the market serving the same primary function, it is not easy to get more and more people download your app. However, with perseverance, you can develop a marketing plan and attract more interested users. The above tips will hopefully give you correct marketing insights and help you earn more users over time, but the key is to keep moving forward as it is a marathon, not a sprint.

Juned Ghanchi

Juned Ghanchi is a passionate contributing blogger and CMO at IndianAppDevelopers - a top iPhone app development company in India. He has a long-term experience in writing articles based on latest mobility solutions technologies.